Magna Graecia

Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

The ancient Greek seaport colonies of southern Italy and Sicily from the eighth to the fourth century B.C. Cumae and Tarantum (modern Taranto) remained significant after the decline of the other colonies.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

proper n. The coastal parts of Sicily and southern Italy once colonized by Greek settlers

Etymologies

Sorry, no etymologies found.

Examples

Meanwhile other Greek cities had established colonies around the western shores of the Mediterranean, the densest region of settlement being in southern Italy and Sicily, which became known as Magna Graecia, or Great Greece.

Not only did the Tarentines revolt from us and the whole of that coastal district of Italy called Magna Graecia, which you would naturally suppose would follow a leader of the same language and nationality as themselves, but the Lucanians, the Bruttians and the Samnites did the same.

[45] He appears to have spent the latter half of his life in that part of Italy, called Magna Graecia, so denominated in some degree from the numerous colonies of Grecians by whom it was planted, and partly perhaps from the memory of the illustrious things which

The rape of the Sabine women may reflect a common practice on the part of migratory males; the Greek colonization of the western Mediterranean was almost all male, so the subsequent generations were biologically the products of Greek men and native women (though culturally they were fully Greek, as evidenced by the term "Magna Graecia" to refer to Sicily and southern Italy).

A team of researchers, at The Babraham Institute, United Kingdom, and the University of Catanzaro "Magna Graecia", Italy, has now provided insight into this issue by studying both human metastatic melanomas (aggressive forms of skin cancer that have spread to other sites) and spontaneous mouse melanomas.